Schools that build summer "bridges" for students pay a price

On a muggy August afternoon last year, nearly 75 Bronx students could be found playing orchestra instruments to the tune of Duke Ellington’s C Jam Blues in the auditorium of M.S. 223.

They were gathered to mark the close of three weeks of arts, music, and math instruction they received through the school’s first summer “bridge” program. M.S. 223 is one of dozens of city middle and high schools to invite to incoming students for summer classes meant to immerse them in school culture and prevent them from forgetting what they learned the previous year.

“Summer bridge is important because we think of our model as a year-round school,” said Rashid Davis, principal of Brooklyn’s nascent Pathways in Technology Early College High School. “That way we’re not dealing with that summer learning loss than can go from two to four months of material, especially for high-poverty students. We can’t expect them to magically come in here with the skills they need.”

Indeed, researchers have pegged students’ regression — known as the “summer slide” — at the equivalent of two months of school or more. City officials recognize the challenge: This summer, the Department of Education is piloting a small program in the South Bronx for students who are struggling but not failing.

But the funding for that program, Summer Quest, comes from private donors. Public funds, for the most part, are earmarked only for the thousands of students across the city who are required to attend summer school because of low test scores or poor grades.

That means schools that develop programs for incoming students who aren’t already in trouble are on their own to scrounge up funding.

Principals say they turn to outside help or struggle to find wiggle room in their annual budgets to finance the programs, which range from three-day-long orientations to six-week intensive geometry classes. The school leaders say the programs are invaluable for students who can make it, but most can’t afford to run a program large enough for every student to participate.

“We absolutely have to make tradeoffs because there is no unique funding that comes in for summer bridge,” Davis said. “You have to decide to make that type of investment. [Tradeoffs] could be with supplies, or it could be half a person’s salary, it really depends.”

Davis has strongly encouraged PTECH’s rising ninth- and 10th-graders to enroll in a six-week geometry course starting this month. As the new school grows to its full size, Davis said he would like to offer six weeks of summer enrichment classes or college-level courses to every student. He also wants to give every incoming ninth-grader the chance to pass geometry before he or she even begin high school, thereby eliminating one hurdle on the course toward calculus.

Those plans will cost him. This summer’s program will cost about $30,000 in teacher wages and classroom materials for the 200 students, he said. Those funds come out of the school’s total budget of $1,005,000.

Davis said he is used to the budget wrangling. As principal of Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy, he sometimes had to pull funding from his school-year budget to pay for classes for students who were mandated to attend summer school. The city allocates funding to each school for summer remediation, but the budgets are based on estimates made before students take their final exams.

Sana Nasser, the principal of Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx, said she usually has no money left over after meeting the needs of students who are required to attend summer school to fund enrichment. But she is still able to run a small bridge program for a quarter of her incoming students with the help of the community-based organization Sports and Arts.

Sports and Arts pays for four of Truman’s teachers to run the program, which Nasser estimates would cost about $35,000 if she funded it from the school’s budget.

“I have not been able to pay for it with the DOE funds. I couldn’t do it financially,” she said. “Yet it is so valuable. We give them teachers that we feel are very nurturing but also know how to set rules and boundaries, because that’s really what they’re going to face in September.”

Nasser sends each of her 600 incoming students a letter inviting them to attend the summer program, which will run July 19 to August 19, but can only accomodate about 150. If more than that number apply, she selects the students with the lowest test scores and attendance rates.

Nasser said she would prefer for the program to benefit everyone.

“We find those kids that come in, they’re transition when they come in in September is a much better adjustment,” she said. “We take them on tours. We teach them how to negotiate the building, the elevators, the gyms, lunch. And they get to know the teachers. They’re coming in with the leverage of having someone they can go to — and the kids need that.”

Philip Weinberg, principal of Brooklyn’s High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology, another large high school, offers 12 days of summer enrichment classes and an orientation for ninth-graders. But only the first 112 students who sign up out of his incoming class of roughly 350 are allowed to attend.

He estimates that the 60 hour-long program led by four teachers will cost his school at least $10,000 this year.

“It’s definitely a budget hit,” Weinberg said.”It’s a game of priorities. We have made the decision that offering even one third of the class an opportunity to acculturate to the building is worthwhile.”

Students who make the cut will receive math and English lessons designed to close the gaps between what they learned in eighth grade and what they will need to know for the first weeks of high school. The students also get to meet school administrators and explore the school’s Gothic-style building in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

“One of the first projects they do in math is measure the school,” Weinberg said. “It causes them to go all over the building, so the first day in September, one out of three kids in every ninth grade class will know where the next room is. We want to alleviate a lot of that fear of the unknown.”

Labor Day used to signal the end of summer break and the return to school. That’s no longer the case in Tennessee, but the long holiday is a good time to catch up on all that happened over the summer. Here are 10 stories to get you up to speed on K-12 education in Tennessee and its largest school district.

TNReady is back — with a new test maker.

Last school year ended on a cliffhanger, with the State Department of Education canceling its end-of-year tests for grades 3-8 in the spring and firing testmaker Measurement Inc. after a series of missteps. In July, Commissioner Candice McQueen announced that Minnesota-based Questar will pick up where Measurement Inc. left off. She also outlined the state’s game plan for standardized tests in the coming year.

But fallout over the state’s failed TNReady test in 2015-16 will be felt for years.

The one-year void in standardized test scores has hit Tennessee at the heart of its accountability system, leaving the state digging for other ways to assess whether all of its students are improving.

Speaking of accountability, Tennessee also is updating that plan under a new federal education law.

The state Department of Education has been working with educators, policymakers and community members on new ways to evaluate schools in answer to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, which requires states to judge schools by non-academic measures as well as test scores.

Meanwhile, issues of race and policing have educators talking about how to foster conversations about social justice in school.

In the wake of police-related killings that rocked the nation, five Memphis teachers talked about how they tackle difficult conversations about race all year long.

School closures made headlines again in Memphis — with more closings likely.

Closing schools has become an annual event as Tennessee’s largest district loses students and funding, and this year was no exception. The shuttering of Carver and Northside high schools brought the total number of district-run school closures to at least 21 since 2012. And more are likely. This month, Shelby County Schools is scheduled to release a facilities analysis that should set the stage for future closures. Superintendent Dorsey Hopson has said the district needs to shed as many as two dozen schools — and 27,000 seats — over the next four years. A Chalkbeat analysis identifies 25 schools at risk.

Exacerbating the challenges of shifting enrollment, families in Foote Homes scrambled to register their children for school as Memphis’ last public housing project prepared to close this month amid a delay in delivering housing vouchers to move elsewhere.

The new school year has officially begun, with the budget approved not a moment too soon for Shelby County Schools.

District leaders that began the budget season facing an $86 million shortfall eventually convinced county commissioners to significantly increase local funding, while also pulling some money from the school system’s reserve funds. The result is a $959 million budget that gives most of the district’s teachers a 3 percent raise and restores funding for positions deemed critical for continued academic progress.

The district also unveiled its first annual report on its growing sector of charter schools.

With charter schools now firmly entrenched in Memphis’ educational landscape, a Shelby County Schools analysis shows a mixed bag of performance, while calling on traditional and charter schools to learn from each other and promising better ways to track quality.

Ten stories you might have missed over the summer (and should read now as a new school year begins)

There is no such thing as time off from covering education. While school doors were shuttered, plenty happened this summer on the Colorado education beat. Here, we’ve compiled stories that we hope prove useful as you ease back into your fall routines.

We’ve got your immunization data right here …

For the second year, Chalkbeat tracked down immunization data for more than 1,200 schools in Colorado’s largest school districts. Our database revealed that Boulder remains a hotspot for the anti-vaccination movement, students in districts with racial and income diversity are more likely to get their shots and nearly half of schools in the database did a better job this year tracking students’ immunization records. Read our news story about the findings, check out these six charts that dig into the numbers and search for school-level data here.

In June, Denver Public Schools’ longtime schools chief returned from a six-month unpaid sabbatical in South America with his family. “It made us appreciate the extraordinary resources we have here,” he said in an interview about his experience.

A milestone for Colorado charter schools on diversity, but not so much on integration

But the University Club has a lovely lunch menu (and squash courts, too)…

What if the State Board of Education held a not-so-public meeting with the education commissioner at a private club downtown to prioritize goals, but didn’t get much of anything accomplished? That happened.

Despite opposition from advocacy groups, Colorado appears headed toward lifting a seven-year ban on diet soda in high schools. The rule change would clear the way for diet soda to be sold in high school vending machines and school stores, though districts could decide not to stock the drinks. We covered the issue before and after the State Board of Education’s initial vote.